My travels through the sleazy world of independent wrestling as seen through the hazy murk of nostalgia and filtered through an addiction to pop culture. Written by a whiny, inconsistent, absent-minded procrastinating Grammar-Nazi.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

How do you get your music video done well, done fast and done on a tight budget?
Ask YoungCuts through our site www.MyFilmmaker.com!
Just to give you an idea on how quickly (and cost-effectively) we work around here...

Ketsia's music producer got in touch with us on December 29th (2010)
We sent out a call for filmmaker submissions on the same day.

This is how we described the project:"Music video for upandcomingMontreal singer. Looking for upbeat high-energy film, shot on a controlled budget. Film would have to be HD broadcast quality. Prefer to focus on the singer, with as few distractions (dancers, extras) as possible."

We sent the producer 3 filmmaker bids on January 5th (2011).
We arranged for him to interview the 3 filmmakers on January 7th.
The music producer chose his filmmaker on January 7th.

The contract was signed on January 13th.
All filming was done by January 22nd.
Fine Cut was delivered on January 31st
Requests for revisions were delivered by the music producer on February 3rd.

The Final Cut was delivered and accepted on February 11th.
All material was delivered by ftp on February 11th.
The video was uploaded to YouTube on February 13th.

Without discussing the budget in detail, the music producer paid under $6,000.00 and had his completed music video (which he is delighted with) uploaded to YouTube within 46 days (!) of asking for a quote. The music producer actually had bids even less than what he ended up paying, but fell in love with the filmmaker's artistic vision for the music video. The music producer is much happier with this music video than the last one that he had done on a much higher budget!

You can get your music video done well, done fast and without either blowing your brains our or breaking the bank and this video right here is proof!

For more information on getting your music video produced by YoungCuts, contact Michael Ryan, Mike@YoungCuts.com, 514-285-4591

Might as well start with the headline match. The Inter Species Wrestling champion, leader and founder of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and (as he has recently reminded me) the Beef Father-Fucker Champion of the World, the one, the only (and thank God for that) Giant Tiger finally putting his title on the line against WWF veteran, Wrestling Society X star (under the name Matt Classic) and the second funniest man in wrestling, Colt Cabana.

At least in theory we are supposed to be getting Colt Cabana vs. Giant Tiger.

The fly in the ointment with that particular plan is that the ISW promoter, one Mikhail Q. Rotch Esquire, made the classic blunder of announcing the match before getting Giant Tiger to sign a contract agreeing to show up on March 27th, bring his belt and defend his title against Cabana or anyone else.

GT naturally is less than enthused about defending his title especially against world-class competition like Colt Cabana, so he started badgering Rotchy with a series of ridiculous demands. The last time something like this happened before the first ISW Connecticut show, GT made a series of ridiculous demands, Rotch caved on all of them and GT still didn't show up to the match.

Or as an even better example, before our 4th Anniversary show, Rotchy failed to get Giant Tiger to sign a contract for a match. This led to GT coming to the ring and challenging Rotchy to a match. When Rotch refused to wrestle Giant Tiger, GT declared victory and then used that victory as the basis for challenging Player Uno at the end of the show allowing Tiger with Sexxxy Eddy's help to steal the ISW title from Uno. This also led to me getting the shit kicked out of me by Giant Tiger and Eddy.

While my powers as Your Beloved Commissioner are largely honorary and theoretical, I decided to involve myself in this situation, before it spiralled out of control, which is why (I guess) when I came back from lunch the other day, I walked in on Giant Tiger sitting at MY desk, cyber-stalking celebrities online on MY computer while simultaneously making long-distance calls to California on MY phone.

Despite the sleazy start to the negotiations, I am happy to report that I was able to convince Giant Tiger to sign a contract to show up at BONER JAM and defend his ISW title. I am not 100% happy with what I had to promise Giant Tiger to get him to sign the contract, but the contract is signed and I am told that video of the signing will be going up shortly.

While we are waiting for that, here is the black and white version of the BONER JAM poster.

BONER JAM: Black and White and Read All Over!

Credit Rotchy for making sure that BONER JAM had a great star to wrestle in the main event, but when Giant Tiger actually shows up to wrestle him, you can credit Your Beloved Commissioner (i.e. ME!) for forcing Giant Tiger to show up and bring the ISW title belt with him.

Remember that BONER JAM is at Foufounes Electriques on Sunday, March 27th. You can get tickets from me at my office. E-Mail Llakor@hotmail.com for information about tickets and some special offers.

After a long absence from ISW, I will be returning as its beloved Commissioner and the Worst Ring Announcer in the History of the Multi-Verse.

You can certainly find the video above and more in many places on these here interwebs. Rather than posting all of them in one fell swoop, I will be be posting them one at a time with some added commentary, behind the scenes look at the promotion and emptying of the bag of some secrets since at the end of the day, I am not really promoting anymore and I don't really give a shit about kayfabe.

Let's start by showing you the first draft of the BONER JAM poster.

BONER JAM First Draft

Also just a few words about Foufounes Electriques, the spiritual home (if not the birthplace) of Inter Species Wrestling. Foufs is an intimate venue (this means that it is small) but that is really the only bad thing that you can say about the venue. The positives far outweigh that (literally) tiny negative.

The best things about Foufs (and this is by far not an exhaustive list:
The owners LOVE Inter Species Wrestling.
The beer is cheap and plentiful.

We have never had a bad show at Foufs and this includes the time when the truck bringing the ring broke down twice on the highway only arriving five minutes before the bell was scheduled to ring and to distract the crowd downstairs in the bar, we had to send out El Hijo del Bamboo to entertain the crowd and when that didn't work, we sent out the Badd Boys to beat the shit out of a Panda Bear, which was rather like sending two sharks to beat up on a gold fish and we are all going straight to hell... but even that show was great.

The crowds are always hot and into the show. Heck they are so close to the ring they have very little choice but to be IN the show. .
There is a real backstage or rather an above stage.
All the wrestlers watch the full show and frequently heckle the proceeedings.Kevin Steen once bounced a water bottle off my head while I was announcing.

There are posters for George Romero movies on the walls which sometimes makes it look like Izzy Deadyet and Zombiefied are coming out of the walls.

Once when I was announcing the ISW 4th Anniversary results, banged my head HARD on the metal curved staircase that leads up to the back above-stage area.

Stinky the Homeless Guy once found the original ISW belt in the garbage at Foufs (Kevin Steen threw it out, the big jerk) and I accidentally made Stinky the first ISW Other Champion.

In addition to being the ISW Champion, Giant Tiger is also the proud owner of the Beef Wellington Father-Fucker Wrestling Champion of the World Belt.

And many other reasons, basically Foufs is awesome. So on March 27th, please come and bring a friend. You can get tickets from me at my office. E-Mail Llakor@hotmail.com for information about tickets and some special offers.

I will be putting up some more of these over the next little while as I post up the other videos. Feel free to send your beloved Commissioner questions to answer.

What you may ask, am I sending to Rusty Shackles to thank him for this really great piece of art? (Even if it makes Rusty's fans and friends call him a bigsoftie?) Well, Rusty shared his Amazon Wish List with me, showing excellent taste by having Raging Phoenix on his list. I was originally going to send Rusty some copies of Empowered, but it turned out that Archambault had some copies of 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Thirst cheap, so I got those instead. I also threw in a copy of Wham! Bam! Thank You Ma'am! from Inter-Species Wrestling, the rather insane wrestling federation that I am powerless Commissioner of and occasional ring announcer for. (Cheap Pug Department: our next show is Boner Jam in Montreal at Foufounes Electriques on Sunday, March 27th.)

Final Colored Version

So big ups to Rusty Shackles. Go visit his web-site, follow him on the Twitter and hire him to do art-work for you!

Next week, I will probably throw out my thoughts on 8 Diagram Pole Fighter and Thirst, both of which played at Fantasia in year's past.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

As I mentioned yesterday, my girlfriend Bridget used to have a male Siamese Tonkinese cat called Sasha. After a long illness, she had to have him put down.

She recently saw a Siamese kitten in a pet store and was thinking of buying him. Like an idiot, I was guilty of being an unsupportive boyfriend. Granted, I probably had logic on my side, but I wasn't really considering the emotional side of it, how much Bridget missed Sasha. Long story short, by the time that Bridget had done her due diligence and was ready to buy the kitten and take her home, the kitten had already been sold.

Immediately, I felt terrible. Valentine's Day was coming up, so I asked Rusty Shackles to do a piece for me similar to what I had asked Mike Holmesto do. After some haggling, Rusty agreed although I sensed he was less than enthusiastic about drawing a blue rose.

At the same time, I was scouring the internet for Siamese or Tonkinese kittens or young cats that needed to be rescued near Montreal. (Logic be damned!) Bridget and I were talking about visiting some pet shelters.

Then Maggie came into our lives.

This is Maggie.

Bridget is a Production Supervisor in a Village des Valeurs, the thrift store chain better known as Value Village or Savers. A couple walked into her store with a cage, walked into the furniture section, looked around furtively and abandoned the cage with a long-haired gray female kitten inside. The cage was dirty and stunk of cigarette smoke and the kitten was thin but friendly.

Bridget took the kitten to her vet and had her checked out. The vet pronounced her a healthy but under-nourished five month old kitten, so Bridget took her home and named her Maggie. She was kept isolated from the other animals for a few weeks until she could be neutered and some final medical procedures and tests could be performed. That was done on Valentine's Day and Maggie is now roaming around Bridget's house getting on the nerves of the other cats and delighting Luka.

As soon as Bridget told me about Maggie, I asked Rusty to include her in the drawing which he was delighted to do. In part I suspect, because it allowed him to jettison the blue rose from the picture.

Maggie pouncing on an unsuspecting Tyson

Again, not a bad likeness of Tyson, given that Rusty has never seen him, but it is startling how close Rusty got to drawing Maggie (including her yellow eyes) when my only description of her was a long-haired gray kitten.

Maggie!!

Mucho thanks to Rusty Shackles for the drawing (visit his site!) and maybe Friday, I will show you the pencil stage of the drawing and the ink stage (and next week maybe I will write about what I sent to Rusty to thank him for the drawing.)

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I, on the other hand, dislike flowers as gifts because I am an unromantic schmuck, because flowers die, because they frequently stink and because I have a tendency to be allergic to them.

So, the last time I went to a comic-book convention, I went to an artist doing sketches bu the name of Mike Holmes and asked him to draw me a vase with a blue rose in it with a beige and brown short-haired non-evil Siamese cat rubbing up against the vase. The Siamese cat because Bridget has one (Bianca) had another (the late and dearly missed Sasha) and her mother has two more (Bailey and Tyson).

Here is what Mike drew:

Tyson and Vase With Blue Rose

As it turns out, the cat he drew is the spitting image of Tyson who belongs to Bridget's Mom.

Non-evil is admittedly subjective.

I actually gave the original drawing to Bridget some months ago, but to properly explain my Valentine's Day gift to her, I had to show this image first. (I will show her Valentine's Day gift tomorrow.)

As much as Superman is the template for the modern super-hero, his
relationship with Lois Lane is also the foundation of super-heroic
romance.

This is true as far as it goes. My difficulty with it is that Sims is not going deep enough. There is a very real argument to be made here that the foundation of comic book romance is George Herriman's love triangle of Krazy Kat, Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Bull Pupp.

The original comic book engine of comedy pursuit and romance

George Harriman's genius was to create a perpetual motion machine of comedy, destruction, romance and pursuit.

Ignatz Mouse throws a brick at Krazy Kat. Kat interprets this as a gesture of physical affection. Ignatz Mouse swears that (s)he feels nothing but contempt for Krazy Kat, hence the brick, but Kat argues that Ignatz's inability not to throw a brick is proof of the mouse's devotion. (And this is a compelling albeit circular argument.) Offisa Bull Pupp is in turn genuinely devoted to Krazy Kat, but the cat ignores the dog's signs of affection. Pupp, not discouraged by Kat's refusal to return his (her?) affections, chases Ignatz Mouse for his (her?) physical cruelty to Kat and frequently jails the mouse.

This cycle of violence and romance and pursuit can be traced as the foundation for:

Tom & Jerry - Love is the Chase

Which in turn leads to:

Itchy & Scratchy - S&M without safe words

And arguably:

Spy vs. Spy - You always hurt the one you love

And the same dynamic is at work in the relationship of TV's first gay couple:

There is an argument that for Batman, the love triangle is Bruce, Batman and whatever woman happens to wander into Bruce's life. And for Superman, the love triangle is Clark, Superman and Lois Lane.

The most surprising thing about Chris Sims' failure to cite Krazy Kat as the source for romantic love in comic books is that his article is filled with examples of relationships built on foundations of romantic cruelty.

Heck, besides being the Interwebs most prominent Batmanologist, Sims is also it's leading expert on the romanticmishaps of one James Bartholomew Olsen frequently trapped in love's chains by a woman (Lucy Lane) who makes Ignatz Mouse look like well... certainly someone much nicer.

What Others Are Saying

Who Counter

The following text will not be seen after you upload your website,
please keep it in order to retain your counter functionality
Texas Hold’em is the latest betting in the casinos. Online sources for cool cat casino are very effective sources to start with. Beware of gambling in a black-listed online casino. free counter

About Me

I am the Festival Director for the YoungCuts Film Festival; the head writer/publicist/SHILL~ for the International Wrestling Syndicate; and the Commissioner and Worst Ring Announcer in the Multiverse for Inter-Species Wrestling.